The Virginia Beach City Council met on June 17, 2026, to receive briefings on two major initiatives: the proposed sale and redevelopment of Virginia Beach National Golf Course and an update to the Interfacility Traffic Area (ITA) Master Plan. The Council also approved the consent agenda, heard public testimony on a hotel project, and made appointments to various boards and commissions.
And uh Mr. Bahaney, I understand we have a couple items to discuss today. We do, Mr. Mayor. The first item will be a briefing from our economic development director, Emily Archer. She's going to brief City Council on the results from the Virginia Beach National RFP. Emily, the floor is yours. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of City Council. Thank you for having me. As the manager just mentioned, we'll provide an overview of the golf course, a little bit of the history and the background, we'll review the RFP process to date, examine the selected proposal for Virginia Beach National Golf Course, review the purchase terms negotiated, and seek your direction on next steps. The clubhouse of the golf course is pictured on the screen on the right. Currently, the city owns the land, it's leased to the Virginia Beach Development Authority, VBDA, and has a management agreement with the operator of Virginia Beach Golf Club LLC for operations. The current operator's term expires at the end of this year. Just for orientation, this is located at 2500 tournament drive off of Princess Ann Road. It's about everything in yellow is 350 acres. It's used as an 18-hole 7,432-yard call course designed by golf architect Pete Dye for both tournament play and public play. It also contains the YMCA in green on the image on the upper left, 50 acres of the YMC's first T nine whole youth golf course. In February, you all heard this item to be transferred to the YMCA and directed that we uh move forward with that transfer. That subdivision process is underway and the transfer is pending at this time. Uh it's zoned AG, it's in council district two. You can see the assessed value at 4.8 million and the market value estimate at 6.5 million. The red box on the right hand side of the image is about 42 acres. I wanted to point out that are outside of the ITA and APZ noise regulations. Some bit of the history and the background of the course, the city originally leased this property to the Virginia Beach Development Authority in 1997 for the development of a tournament players club, TPC. The City of Virginia Beach then went on to purchase the course from TPC for about 4.6 million in 2006. VBDA and Virginia Beach Golf Corps LLC, the current operator, entered into management agreement in 2007. That is the one I mentioned that expires at the end of this year. Following that audit, the VBDA conducted uh comprehensive facility condition assessments of both the course and the building facilities and identified about $7.7 million in capital repairs that were needed. VBDA appropriated about 1.8 million of innovation park land cells that they had available to address some of the capital maintenance needs. Since that time, they've invested um uh in a new HVA system for the clubhouse, a whole new roof, and about um uh life one was recently um completed uh for improvement to help the overflow of the drainage from the golf course. It is the um outfall for the drainage system of the golf course. Long story short, you can see kind of a comparison of the two aerials from 2005 to 2025 on the screen. Um, although it was designed by a preeminent golf course architect, it's not what it once was. You can see where the sand traps or the waste areas are overgrown now, erosion is destabilizing destabilizing the lake banks, car paths are deteriorating. The overall golf course has been diluted, lessening the challenge for players and reducing the overall golf experience. It is a popular golf course still, um, and it is generating revenue. This is a financial summary showing uh the current uh revenue coming in from the golf course to the city. Uh so there's currently the operations agreement has a profit sharing of the net income over 100,000 per year, and then there's an operation payments that's split between the city and uh VBDA at 5%. Um you can kind of see the average annual over this 18-year period at the on the top row of this uh table. Um, the total operation and taxes remitted annually averaged over that 18-year period about 217,000 dollars per year. But for capital maintenance needs, only that 15% that comes to VB Day is appropriated for capital maintenance. As VBD is responsible for everything over $5,000 at the course. And the red numbers that you see show that VBD's portion of the capital maintenance receipts is not adequate for the current level of maintenance needed. The audit also attracted attention from the development community and city received unsolicited proposals from several entities. So following the mounting capital expenditures and the unsolicited proposals received, and September of 2025, City Council authorized the release of an RFP for sell of the golf course, retaining an 18-hole public course. It was widely advertised for 45 days. We received nine responses in November 2025. Five of those responses had new golf course operations, and four of those responses had new golf course operations with the housing component with them. We shortlisted four of the respondents, two with a housing component and two with just new golf course operations, and went through our series of interviews between January and February 2026. And then in February 2026, City Council authorized the negotiation of a term sheet with a top ranking respondent.